Birmingham Children’s Hospital has thousands of supporters and fundraisers who repeatedly go out of their way to make a real difference to our children and young people. Each week we will be telling the story of one our dedicated Charity Champions to highlight the difference that they are making to the children we treat.

Forget the Champions League and the FA Cup final – this year’s most talked about football tournament was the Dudley Private Hire Taxi Association Cup organised by Shaz Saleem from Kingswinford.

Teams from taxi ranks across the Midlands – including Kingswinford, Halesowen, Sedgley, Lye, Stourbridge and Dudley – took to the pitch at Goals Dudley to raise £1,130.75 for Birmingham Children’s Hospital.

This week’s Charity Champion Shaz organised the tournament to raise money to thank the hospital for the care his son Shazad Ali Saleem received.

Shazad was born with a hole in his heart and had an operation in 2009 to make him better and now he is a happy and healthy little boy.

Before the match, the taxi drivers collected sponsorship from their customers. The winners of the match were the Elite team, who are the Lye taxi drivers.

The money raised has been split equally between the hospital’s heart ward and their £4million Children’s Cancer Centre Appeal.

Taxi base manager Shaz, aged 27, said: “Those four hours that Shazad was on the operating table was the longest four hours of my life. The nurses were so calm and helpful so I wanted to give something back to thank them for their support and for making my son better.

“Organising the event was very enjoyable, the tournament itself went extremely well, we had a target of £500 but to double that has really made us very happy.”

The tournament was such a success that Shaz now hopes to make it an annual event.

Vikki Savery, public fundraising manager for the hospital, said: “It’s so lovely that Shaz is using his own personal positive experience as inspiration to raise money for the hospital.

“It’s also great to see the different branches of the same taxi company, coming together to raise money for the same cause.